


Hope

by indigo (indigo_angels)



Category: The A-Team (2010), The A-Team - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-01
Packaged: 2018-10-26 11:30:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10785888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigo_angels/pseuds/indigo
Summary: It's 1919 and former-Colonel John Smith has returned to London - alone - after his time in the trenches. It wasn't how he had planned his homecoming to be...





	Hope

**Author's Note:**

> This is a historical AU, originally written as a challenge at the Yahoo H/F group.

Stepping off the steaming train at Waterloo Station was like stepping off into a cloud and for a moment former-Colonel John Smith wavered at the doorway – this was a step into the unknown for more than one reason. He took it though, he’d never been one to run from a challenge and anyway, the umbrella of the man behind him was sticking into his thigh in clear invitation to get a move on. 

The second his foot hit the platform he was swept up in a tide of human motion, men upon men upon men, very few women, all dressed in sombre, tailored suits, bowler hats, great coats drawn tight against the bitter cold. It was easy to feel alone in the silent, solemn masses and John lifted his head to study the faces of those around him wondering which, if any had seen what he’d seen. Who, just three short months ago, had been toiling through the corpse-strewn battlefields of Europe, trying to equate what they could see with the word, ‘victory’. If any one of these people had been there then they were doing a far better job of assimilating themselves back into everyday life than he was. 

John felt himself shudder and it was only partially to do with the weather as the uncertainty battered him once more – could he do this? Had he made the right decision here? He’d thought he’d been so sure, the horrors he’d seen in France and Belgium, the mud of the fields running scarlet in blood… No, of course he was right, he shook himself firmly, there was no choice to be made here. To stay and he’d lose his mind like so many of those around him, like the once-brilliant Captain Murdock, to leave and it was back to the family estate, standing lost and empty since his mother’s death and a life that he had to carve anew. 

He was in London for a single overnight stay, to talk to someone from his mother’s law firm, someone who would tell him exactly how much money he’d inherited at her passing, and probably how much he’d broken her heart by going off to war in the first place – it was a regret he knew he’d carry until the end of his days. 

Then it would be back to Dartmoor and the house he hadn’t seen in seven years – and the time when he had to make his choices for the future. He was booked onto the 10.30 Express out of Paddington and had already wired ahead so that Jonas would be at Exeter station to collect him at three in the afternoon which meant that, he glanced at his watch, he had only thirty hours of anonymity left before he would have to take up the mantle of the family name once more. It was a depressing thought indeed. 

John’s musings had spat him out of the gaping mouth of Waterloo Station and, as the workers around him filed off to their various desks and offices, John’s feet took him instead to the path towards the river. As soon as he stepped away from the well-worn commuter pavements, the snow returned under his boots, crunching and crackling with ice crystals and threatening to pitch his head over his heels at any moment. 

It had been a cold winter so far, he doubted that temperatures had risen over freezing point on a single day since the miserable Christmas Day he’d spent in Calais, organising the withdrawal of the very last of his men. And due to the bitter Artic weather, Londoners had been presented with a rare and wondrous gift, a gift so unique in recent times that even John, in his current malady of mood, was drawn to stand and look upon it. He lifted his head now as he passed the building site that would, one day, become County Hall and watched as flat capped labourers toiled to complete what the nation saw as proof that life would continue after the Great War. John studied them for a moment, drawn in by the emerging grandeur and marvelling at the sheer scale of it all but he knew the truth of the matter, knew that most of the men who had started this undertaking would never see it completed, were laid in soldier’s graves Europe wide and that thought set his feet walking again, slipping and sliding over the treacherous pavements to stand, at last, at the edge of the Thames. 

A frozen Thames. 

John had heard tales of such incredible sights as this from his Great Uncle Eustace, an explorer who’d travelled the world over and seen things that had lit the young John’s heart full of a thirst for adventure. Eustace’s wander-lust and taste for the new and exotic had found him a gruesome death in an opium den and John’s had found him the horror of the trenches. And here, again, was the proof that life could play tricks on you, that the ‘frozen wonderland’ of the Frost Fair that John had heard so much about since his de-embarkation at Portsmouth was little more than a new venue for hedonism in a society left reeling at the harshness of life. 

John leaned against the balustrade and let his eyes wander over the scene in front of him, already busy despite the relatively early hour. Temporary public houses were serving beer chilled by the ice they were set up on but the customers looked far from animated and John felt a pang of empathy as he thought of the battles that, he too, fought against the numbing draw of alcohol. He was stronger than that though, for now, he was stronger, although he couldn’t help wondering how long that would last. 

There was an oxen being readied for roasting and huge stone ovens that were being filled with ginger-bread dough, their warming smell enticing through his melancholy and making his empty stomach growl in complaint. For a moment he considered venturing onto the ice, walking past the various games of chance that were open for those eager enough to lose their money, in order to sample some of the freshly baked breads, but his eyes took in the men drifting from stall to stall, their clothes thin and their expressions desperate and he knew he couldn’t bring himself to join them. 

Men returning from the war had been promised jobs and new lives but the fact of the matter was that there just wasn’t the money there to pay them. War had drained the coffers of Europe and Britain was no exception; many, like John’s own Lance-Corporal Baracus had decided to stay on, to continue to fight for a country who, in Baracus’ case at least, hadn’t even allowed him to fight until white causalities had become too high to sustain.

John’s eyes ran over the groups of disaffected men on the ice, wondering how many had fought for their country, how many had lost friends, brothers or a part of themselves just to come back to a wandering hand to mouth existence and his eyes suddenly locked onto a particular figure making its way towards one of the temporary drinking houses. It was a long way off, almost at the other side of the river, but there had been something in that shape, something in the way the owner moved and held himself that set off another memory in John’s mind. 

For long minutes he studied the ice and the drifting men, desperately trying to pick out that original figure but it was no good, there was no one there who John recognised and, with his appointment at Bendicks and Harvey looming, John turned for the bridge and the City. 

As he walked, he thought, his mind drifting back to the young man he’d been reminded of in that flash of memory, the young man who’d been the only bright spot in four gruelling years of war. Lieutenant Templeton Peck had arrived in those first few months in France, fresh faced and impossibly young looking but with a way about him which was also despairingly world-weary. John had been drawn to him immediately, had thought him too young, too soft to be out there at all but that first night, their first foray towards the enemy, had proved him wrong in an instant. The boy fought like a lion, by dawn’s first rays they were the only two from their unit still standing and, despite Peck’s pale face being splattered with the blood of his comrades, he was still at John's side.

Every member of their unit survived that night, due in a large part to the boy’s dogged determination as he and John had dragged their wounded through mud and bomb craters until the medics could get to them. Then he’d helped John, who was bleeding from a shrapnel cut to the head, back to his quarters and even helped draw up the paperwork before finally dragging his commander over to his bed to sleep off his concussion. 

The boy had collapsed there too, falling into an exhausted sleep before he had the chance to leave and, by silent agreement, had slept at John’s side every night afterwards, allowing John to hold him when the older man’s dreams descended into the halls of hell, allowing himself to be held when his own nights were broken by tears and quiet pleas for help. 

Throughout four years of war they stayed together, Peck rising to John’s second in command and finding the nickname of ‘Face’, bestowed on him for his fresh-faced looks that seemed more in keeping with the silent movies of the time rather than the ravages of war. Looks that he held onto, despite everything they went through, losing comrades to death, his best friend Murdock to shell-shock which morphed into something unequivocally worse and the darkness he seemed to carry everywhere with him, accentuated by the lack of any mention of family, any letters, packages or hope.

John had hoped though – he had hoped that they would stay together afterwards as well, Face was planning on leaving the Army once the war was done, had talked with Murdock about setting up a merchant’s business in London, raising money to purchase stocks and shares, living the high-life they both felt they deserved. But those final months had been brutal, they lost Captain Brenner, a long-time member of their team and Face took Murdock’s final descent into lunacy personally, as if it had been his lack of care that had tipped his friend over the edge. 

He and John had fought about that, that last night, and when John awoke, Face had gone. His discharge had already come through, his final pay packet received and just like that he’d disappeared. John had stayed in France as long as he could afterwards, hoping without any real hope that Face would come back to him.

But he didn’t and eventually John had to leave as well and so he was left with nothing other than a brief imagining of the man he’d come to love in the silhouette of a stranger across a frozen river. Shaking his head at the stupidity of it all, John started the short walk into the City.

_________________

The younger John had always thought of dawn as a magical moment, when the blackness of night was driven back by the inexorable advance of day bringing light and hope to those around them, even in the hell-on-earth that was a battlefield. However, he was finding that magic harder and harder to discern these days, finding it harder to greet the new day with anything like hope. That was despite his nights being filled with such appalling images of pain and fear and suffering that, without his Face to hold him through them, sleep was becoming a long-forgotten luxury. Given that – he should be pleased to find the new day, pleased to see that he’d lived through another night, in actual fact he was only finding it more difficult to care.

He’d been standing at this point since the blackest part of the night, when his shouts of terror had woken the people in the next room and they’d banged loudly on the walls in complaint. He’d dressed, packed up his meagre possessions, settled his bill with the incredulous but discrete clerk and left, deciding to wait out the time until his train by watching the frozen river once more. 

All was quiet in the half-light and John’s eyes were drawn to the huge outline of the developing County Hall in front of him as it rose from the night. His meeting with his mother’s solicitor had gone well the day before, better than he had expected. Financially, he was more than comfortable which was a relief and the Estate had enough land and livestock to keep everything ticking over nicely whilst he considered his options. That was one of the things he’d been dreading the most, to be forced into making a decision about his life before he’d even had the chance to parse everything that had happened to him these last four years. 

He’d instructed Mr. Harvey to contact Murdock’s family as well, his aged Grandmother who was listed as his next of kin. John was dammed if he was going to let the boy stagnate in some locked room somewhere; he’d heard talk of Craiglockhart Military Hospital in Edinburgh and how they were finding new ways to help soldiers who found shell-shock hard to throw off. That’s where he thought Murdock should be, and that’s where he’d tasked Harvey with getting him, insisting that money was to be no object.

After that, he’d signed some forms before Harvey had given him the name and address of his proxy in Exeter and John had been free to go, thousands of pounds richer, but no better off at all. He wondered if he ever would be, if this darkness would stalk him forever more, just as it had seemed to stalk his beautiful boy or if, like County Hall across from him, he would manage to draw himself from the night.

He shuffled his feet against the cold and glanced at his wrist watch, the only item to follow him from the trenches, and pushed off from the wooden railing. His train left in two hours, given that he could walk to Paddington within an hour, he should be there in time to buy a hot breakfast before the train left. With a bit of luck the noise of the other passengers and the motion of the train would allow him to sleep for at least some of his journey home. 

He had just turned to leave when his eye was drawn to a shape on the ice as it broke from the shadows of the night. John frowned, it looked like the figure of a man sprawled on the ice, in fact… his heart started beating hard in his chest, it looked like the same figure he’d been watching the day before from the other side of the river, the same figure that had been so painfully familiar to him. Without another thought, he was off, vaulting over the fence and scrambling down the muddied back until his feet hit the ice. It was difficult to rush, the ice was as smooth as glass and riddled with fine crazing that made John fear for his life but he hurried best he could towards that the prone figure of a man. 

It was laid face down, dressed in only thin work clothes which had risen up enough on his left forearm to expose a dagger tattoo – the exact same design to the one currently nestling under John’s own layers of clothing. The sight set his heart beating hard inside his chest as he fell to his knees and grabbed at the fallen man – fallen comrade – just over that tattoo, feeling the chill in the exposed skin, seeing the mottled flesh, sensing the stiffness of limbs and flesh that could never be a good sign. Unbidden, John’s mind flitted back to one of his most precious memories of the war, a rare night away from enemy lines when he’d touched skin both soft and firm with muscle, when he’d mapped a willing body with finger tips and tongue, when he’d traced a familiar tattoo on the skin of another and found that, even in the very worst of places and times, beauty and love could survive. 

That place was a far cry from this and John’s eyes tried not to look at the faintly waving hair that was dusted in tiny diamonds of ice as he gently lifted the man from the ice and held him in his arms, forcing himself to look into the still face, the staring blue eyes and his stomach clenched in sick recognition. 

He knew this man, had served with this man, eaten with him, fought with him, laughed with him, cried with him, been to hell and back with him - but hadn’t been there for him when he died. 

_______________

By the time John made it to Paddington, his train had left without him. For a moment he stood on the empty platform and stared along the tracks that meandered out of London. If he’d felt adrift when he’d arrived in the capital the previous day – it was nothing to what he felt now; the emptiness, the desolation, the creeping question of, “Was it really worth it?” that he couldn’t shake, everything whirled around him and for a long moment he was truly lost. 

He wasn’t a man easily beaten though and slowly he pulled himself together. He would have to wire Jonas, tell him he’d be a day late, he had letters to write as well now, family to console, hearts to break. 

He’d recognised a few men in the melee that had surrounded the discovery of the body on the ice, no one else from his unit but other boys from his battalion that had looked at him with sympathy, they could see that the war had left its mark on him just as surely as it had on them. He hoped that the shock of a death amongst their number would send them on their ways home, they had to have families to go to, houses maybe, spouses, lovers, there had to be more for them than – nothing. In fact, a few had been wandering away already, army issue kit bags slung over their shoulders, off back to their sweethearts in hope that the horrors wouldn’t follow them out of the city.

John hoped that too, but he doubted it, his talisman against the horror was lost to him forever. He pushed out into the main hall and his heart sank at the length of the queue for tickets, for a moment he almost turned away, almost decided to go and find lodgings for the night before he bought another ticket but then he realised the folly in that, knew that if he couldn’t get on the next day’s train he’d be looking at spending the entire weekend in the city and that would greatly affect his plans for accommodation. 

Reluctantly, he joined the back of one of the queues, shuffling forward every few minutes until he was third in line for his window. It was then that he heard it, the argument at the window in front of him, the ticket seller’s voice loud and aggrieved, pointing out that you couldn’t buy a train ticket with a wrist watch. That got John’s full attention immediately, wrist watches were only popular with women or soldiers, most men preferred the more ostentatious pocket watches and, with a sinking heart, he wondered if he could stand to see another fellow warrior humbled by the people he’d fought for on this grey January morning.

A piercing whistle rent the air and two constables ran over and John knew he had to intervene, knew he couldn’t stand by and watch this happen. He stepped forward, the constables were already wrestling with the young man who’d been at the window and was now frantically trying to get back to his watch which was laid forlornly on the payment desk. It was that tiny, insignificant object that started John’s heart thundering away within his chest for a second time that morning. The constables were already dragging its owner away, one of them struggling to get his truncheon out even as John grabbed the abandoned watch and started after them, his finger-tips tracing the engraving on the back plate that he could read by touch alone. 

“Wait, wait!” he ran to catch up, grabbing the raised truncheon before it could impact on the desperate men who had now been pushed to the floor. “He’s with me!” John still had his army papers with him, “He’s just back from the front! Has no money with him, it’s alright, I can vouch for him, I can.”

The man on the floor was pinned face down as the first constable regarded John warily. “He was trying to steal a passage, sir,” he straightened his uniform as he spoke, eyes looking over John’s identity papers. “It’s a big problem in the city at the moment, these men coming back, begging and thieving.”

The anger flared up inside John but he ruthlessly tamped it down, losing his temper would help no one at this point. “I’m sure they don’t mean any harm, sir,” he knew his voice was laced in poison. “It’s just been a hard few years out there, the nightmares don’t go away overnight.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” the anger in the Constable’s voice took John aback, “I’ve lost both my boys these last two years! And then scoundrels like this fellow who were spared, think they have the right to come back and turn to thieving to get by! It’s not right.”

“It’s not,” John knew that his very genuine sorrow sounded through every syllable of his words and the Constable looked up at him in shock, “and I’m so very, very sorry for your loss.” He was as well, for every single life that was extinguished in those four years of madness. “But leave this one with me,” blindly, John reached down and grabbed an arm, tugging the struggling man to his feet at his side. “I swear I’ll see him right, I won’t let the war take another one of our sons.”

For a moment all was still as John and the Constable looked at each other in the hubbub of the busy station and then the Constable nodded, his eyes bright with unshed tears. “Perhaps if George or Albie had had you as their commander, they might have made it back again.” He turned at that, his confused associate looking from him to John then turning and following him out into the grey morning. 

John didn’t pause though, he turned straight on his heel and marched the other way, dragging the man at his side with him along the platform, right to the end, shoving at him until they were hidden from the view of the rest of the world, screening themselves behind a stack of tea crates awaiting collection. He was shaking but didn’t know why, what he was feeling, he had no idea, the emotions in him were roiling and bubbling and alien and scared him witless but it was like his body was operating on an agenda of its own. 

“God damn you, Face!” he shoved the man, hard, into the brick wall of the platform, “Where have you _been_?” Shocked blue eyes blinked back at him and John curled his hands into fists, “I waited for you! For weeks I hung around and waited for you! Asked everyone I could think of where you were, waited for you, worried for you, then, eventually had to _leave without you_! Do you have any idea how hard that was? What that did to me?” He shook his head, furious. “You could reach me, you knew where I was – did it never even cross your mind to let me know you were _alive_? To let me know if you were ever going to come back or if I had to spend the rest of my days alone?” He felt his throat tighten and glanced down, frantically blinking his eyes. “You even think of me at all when you went?”

Silence fell. A long way behind them both the station continued its busy life but John couldn’t have cared less about that; everything he’d suffered through in four long years was coming to a head and threatening to break him completely and he didn’t know what to do about it, didn’t know if he even knew how to fight anymore.

“Hannibal…” he closed his eyes, it had been a long time since anyone had called him that. “I’m sorry, I’m so bloody sorry…” a shaking hand reached his cheek. “I just… Murdock… and you were so angry with me-”

“I couldn’t believe you’d blame yourself for that.”

“-and I didn’t know what you’d do, I didn’t know what you’d want after everything was done…”

“Didn’t know what I’d want?!” John lifted his gaze to focus on the worried eyes staring back at him. “Didn’t I tell you often enough? Didn’t I promise you a life after everything? A life with me? If that’s what you’d wanted?”

But Face just shook his head, a sad smile quirking at his lips, “Out there we were all we had, the comfort, the _love_ we could give each other was everything, but back here, now… Hannibal – why would you still want me?”

“Because I love you!” the growl in John’s voice shocked even him. “Because you are _always_ everything to me, you are _always_ all I have. Back at the river today I thought you’d _died_ -”

“That wasn’t me, that was Henry Jackson.”

“I know!” this time it was a roar and John swallowed hard in an effort to calm himself down, it wouldn’t do for them to be discovered like this. “I know it was Henry because I held his dead body in my arms and cried with relief and self-hatred because I was so pleased it wasn’t you!” Face just stared at him as John visibly deflated, “And if it had been you… I swear… I don’t know what I’d have done, don’t know how I’d have carried on.” 

They stared at each other, the moment between them both stretching out until they fell together, desperate hands pulling and tugging as they kissed, John unable to ever get enough of this intoxicating, infuriating boy. 

“I was waiting here for you,” Face breathed against his neck as they came up for air. “I knew you’d come through London, through Paddington, so I’ve been here every day, looking out for you. But then today, I heard about Henry so I went down to the river to see if it was true, I’d only been there the day before, seen him, talked to him,” John closed his eyes again, _had_ that been his Face he’d seen on the ice, then? “And when I got there, people said that _you’d_ been there and I knew what time the Express left for Exeter and I thought I’d missed you and I didn’t have any money for a ticket and-”

He stopped abruptly with John's kiss, John's hand rubbing circles on his back, John's presence calming him, loving him like it always did and John felt him leaning closer, starting to tug all John's own fractures back together as he did so. 

Reluctantly, John pulled back a little, framed that beautiful face in his hands and forced out a smile for his boy. “How about I get us a couple of tickets on the sleeper? We could be in Exeter a little after eight in the morning – how about you let me take you home?”

Face seemed to sag at that, his weight warm and heavy against John's chest. “How about we do that,” he whispered in return, “and then I set about making you the happiest man in England?”

Happiness was something so seldom felt, so rare and precious in John’s life that it was almost forgotten. But, suddenly, like County Hall slowly climbing upwards from London’s wartime ashes, John felt the sunlight of dawn wash over him, felt that tiny little flutter in his chest that he’d thought was dead. 

He felt hope.

End

______________

So – for the historically aware among you, I feel I must own up to the historical ‘tweaks’ I have made in the name of creative licence. The truth of the matter was, I wanted them in my story, though, so I felt justified in bending time a little…

Firstly, the Cornish Riviera Express, the train that Hannibal misses, was suspended for the majority of World War One, and only resumed service in the summer of 1919, a good five months after this story is set. And it didn’t stop at Exeter until about 1930.  
Secondly, Licensing Laws which came into effect in 1914 would have made the ‘pop-up’ pubs on the ice an impossibility.  
And finally, the huge one. The last time that the River Thames froze solidly enough for a Frost Fair was in February 1814, absolutely not January 1919. Does being inaccurate by the sum of one hundred and five years still qualify as a ‘tweak’???


End file.
